At three months old, Freya was diagnosed with a mild hearing loss which professionals had hoped would remain steady, however by 12 months old her hearing loss had progressed.
“Freya initially wore a bone conduction hearing aid due to issues with fluid in her ear. When she was 13 months old and the fluid was improving, she was fitted with her first pair of hearing aids,” Emily said.
Finding out about Freya’s hearing loss and the experiences that followed felt like a rollercoaster of emotions for the family.
“Due to the floods some of our family were displaced, some were away and others were around children who were unwell, we didn’t have many family members able to visit when Freya was a newborn. We mostly kept the news she’d failed her hospital hearing screening to ourselves,” said Emily.
On the first newborn hearing screen Freya was referred on for further testing of her right ear.
“Our first two children passed on the first test, so this was new for us. I had started to suspect Freya did have a hearing loss due to her nature – she was the most quiet baby, and apart from birth she only cried on one occasion during our hospital stay.”
The family met with an audiologist at the Townsville University Hospital when Freya was three months old for an ABR test to confirm if Freya had hearing loss.
“I can remember the room clearly, and black leather chair I sat in. It was a small room with a door that had a tiny window with a blind. It took two hours to do the test, and at the end the audiologist quietly said, ‘I’m sorry to say she has a hearing loss in both ears, worse in the right ear’,” Emily said.
“I remember looking at my husband and silently crying. It was the unknown of what we faced and what our daughter would face.
When Freya was five months old she had specialist genetic testing to find the cause of her hearing loss, including a heel prick to test for cytomegalovirus (CMV).
“This was the first of many tests we would wait on. This was one of the hardest parts of our journey, waiting on results,” Emily said.
They were referred to an ENT for review of Freya’s ear canals to see if Freya had any malformation or structural issues with the ear canal, who then referred them to Hear and Say in Townsville for speech therapy and audiology services.
“We met with Amy from Hear and Say before Freya was 12 months old and had an initial consult, and when Freya was almost two we met Liza and started speech therapy sessions – Freya responded the best she ever had with the Hear and Say team,” Emily said.
“It was the first time we could complete a hearing test in one sitting. Liza and Lisa changed tactics when Freya became disinterested or distracted. It was for me, one of the best experiences.
